Tag: Edward Hirsch

Langston Hughes poem/Sealey Challenge

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone. Molly is a teacher, and last week she shared a charming interaction she had at a Staples store with a boy who was soon to enter kindergarten. He expressed in an adorable way the excitement and uncertainty about this new beginning. The end of Summer is an exiting time of year for many.

This week I decided to participate in the Sealey challenge. I wanted to make a commitment that I could actually keep, and I pulled this book off my shelf: 100 Poems To Break Your Heart by Edward Hirsch.

As we all know, poems have layers of meaning. Hirsh has chosen 100 poems, great poems old and new, and in two or three pages tells us the history of the poem and the author’s craft. I am reading at least one a day. Today I read this poem written in 1927 by Langston Hughes, about a time many Americans want to forget: the Jim Crow era.

history:

SONG FOR A DARK GIRL
by Langston Hughes

Way Down South in Dixie
     (Break the heart of me)
They hung my black young lover
     To a cross roads tree.

Way Down South in Dixie
     (Bruised body high in air)
I asked the white Lord Jesus
     What was the use of prayer.

Way Down South in Dixie
     (Break the heart of me)
Love is a naked shadow
     On a gnarled and naked tree.

This is a short poem, three quatrains. The language is direct but complex in terms of meaning. I’ll mention some of what I learned. First “Way Down South in Dixie” refers to a popular song from the segregated South. We all know this song. It was written to be song by someone in black face who, playing a slave, longs for a return to the South that is so dear to him. This is placed in contrast to the reality of lynching, in a place and time of cruelty that few black folks would long to return to. The song was propaganda..

Also in contrast are the phrases “black young lover”in the first stanza and “White lord Jesus,” in the second. What god, white or otherwise, worthy of worship would allow lynching to happen, and is this white god or the young black lover, more worthy of praise?

Anyone reading this poem will understand, if they didn’t quite before, why book banning and revision of history is taking place in America. Our true history, involving such crimes as slavery and lynching, and the hijacking of Christianity, are all true, facts to remember, as teachers and librarians understand.

I look forward to exploring more of the poems in this Hirsch’s book.

On a different note, more I can share this week. First, I have been trying out water color painting. It’s fun to try and I’ve found some books to get me started.

I love the painter Wayne Thiebaud, who painted cupcakes and gum ball machines among many other things. This spring I saw a Thiebaud exhibit at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco. He wrote about being a thief, an artist stealing ideas from other artists. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I painted a donut as he might. In a book entitled, WATERCOLOR: Success in Four Steps, by Marina Bakasova, I found instructions on how to draw a donut.

It’s not hard to paint pastries or veggies, it just requires some patience. Faces and landscapes, well, that takes more study. Still it was fun sending this postcard to my sister.

I also happened upon and snapped a picture of a red tailed hawk this week, in a grassy area, enjoying a tasty catch.

I think I’ll try to draw him soon. Not sure about drawing feathers but will try. His tail was a deep and bright brick red. He was gorgeous and let me watch him for a while.

Red Tailed Hawk

Enjoy the rest of summer. Thank you Molly Hogan for hosting! Best wishes to all those returning to school classrooms and libraries soon..

Edward Thomas’ THE OWL

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Linda Mitchell here. Thank you Linda for hosting!

Not long ago, after the snow melted and spring was on the way, I stopped at Woodstock, NY, on my way home from a family visit. This creek runs through town.

Woodstock is not where the famous 1969 music festival was held. That was Bethel, NY, but Woodstock is an arts community, with craft shops and an independent bookstore. There I found this wonderful 2021 anthology of poems entitled, 100 POEMS TO BREAK YOUR HEART, edited by Edward Hirsch who is a poet and a teacher. Though it is not about poetry “mostly for children,”as in my blog title, I do think that some older adolescents might enjoy and learn from this book.

Hirsch has chosen one hundred stunning poems, most I’ve never heard of, and gives us a brief history of the poet and discusses why each poem continues to stir readers’ emotions.

Poet Edward Thomas was a young man, born in 1878, who loved walking and studying nature. I discovered him in this book and found this lovely photo on Wikipedia.

Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

Thomas is known today for his war poems. “The Owl” was written in February 1915 after the start of World War l. Still a civilian, with great empathy he describes the comforts of food, fire and rest during one evening, knowing these are things that soldiers and unfortunate others, are not able to enjoy that night. 

THE OWL
by Edward Thomas (1915)

Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.

Then at the inn had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry cold, and tired was I,
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl's cry, a most melancholy cry

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment,
But one telling me plain what I escaped
And others couldn't, that night, as in I went.

And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird's voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.

Three months later, Thomas joins the British Army, and two years later, died during a shell blast.

There are a few interesting craft notes that Hirsch brought to my attention. One is the owl’s cry which recalls the owl in Shakespeare’s LOVE’S LABOUR LOST. But in contrast to the Bard’s owl with its “merry note”, Thomas’ owl is melancholy.

Also the owls cry is introduced at the last line of the second stanza and the stanza break extends it’s effect with, “Shaken out long and clear upon the hill.”

The last line of the third stanza, which Hirsch describes as “an important hinge” to the poem, is eleven syllables. All the rest in the poem are ten. A hinge because it introduces the “others” that Thomas is thinking of.

In the fourth stanza, the word “salted” is a wonderful word that can simply make us think of seasoning in food, but also brings to mind tears, and sadness the author feels thinking of all those others outside the inn where he finds comfort.

This poem broke my heart. Hirsch discusses THE OWL, and many others, in a clear and accessible way.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.